Russia to stop free lifts for U.S. astronauts

Reuters News Service

Published 6:30 am, Tuesday, December 28, 2004

MOSCOW -- Russia's cash-strapped space agency said today it would stop giving U.S. astronauts free rides into orbit in the future.

Russia has single-handedly serviced the International Space Station, a $95 billion orbiting laboratory, for almost two years since the United States grounded its shuttles after the fatal Columbia accident.

It has made no secret of the financial pinch it has felt from having to launch joint U.S.-Russian manned missions and cargo ships to the station, saying its space budget is a mere fraction of NASA's resources.

Space agency chief Anatoly Perminov will go to the United States early next year with a proposal, a Roskosmos spokesman said.

"From 2006, we will put U.S. astronauts into orbit only on a commercial basis," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Perminov as saying.

NASA officials were not available for comment. Roskosmos said it had not received any response to the proposal yet.

The United States has often funded Russian cosmonauts' trips to the station on its Shuttles and since the Columbia tragedy Russia has done the same for U.S. astronauts.

Under the new proposal, the United States would write off debts of man-hours that Russia owes for work carried out on the station in exchange for Russia launching its astronauts.

When the station was built, participants from 16 nations agreed money and expertise they would put into the project. Russia still owes some of its agreed input, some of which would be written off if the United States agrees to the plan.

It was the latest in a string of money-saving plans devised by Russia to alleviate its financial woes.

It has launched two space tourists, who enjoyed around 10 days in space for their $20 million tickets, and has plans to send up more amateurs. Perminov, quoted by Itar-Tass, said two foreigner space tourists could be launched in 2006.

A plan to extend astronauts' stays on the ISS to up to a year from the current six months -- enabling Russia to send up more fee-paying space tourists -- was turned down earlier this year by NASA, which said the move would restrict the work of the station, already operating below capacity.

U.S. officials have said shuttle flights could resume in May, an event Russia is keenly awaiting.

"At the beginning of next year I will go to America to personally make sure that the preparation for the resumption of shuttle flights is going according to plan," Perminov said, quoted by Itar-Tass.

Russia has launched two manned and five unmanned spaceships to the station this year from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which it rents from its ex-Soviet neighbor.